End Date and New Beginning

I've had a lot of stress. The Banque de Estupidos situation is still not resolved and I'm fraught with anxiety over it to the point where I broke out in hives on the way to work on Monday and had to stop at the drug store for Benadryl in cream and pill form. I then gave myself a migraine over it.

My job is okay, it's frustrating because I feel like the platform is completely broken and there is no way this thing will launch in a few weeks. I think it will be September before it is ready for public consumption. Part of me wants to stay to see the project through to end, part of me wants to go back to work for Jo tomorrow, and part of me just wants to go back to bed and not deal with anything ever again.

The people I work with are delightful and wonderful, and I really like them. Wouldn't trade that part at all. It is what gets me out of bed in the morning, knowing I will see my lovely Indian friend who gives me a word of the day in Hindi and plays games with me, and my tremendously wonderful boss who tries not to say anything bitter and jaded about the platform/website before noon, and fails. Miserably.

The other day at work, I was looking at the calendar and realized that with the end of the school year, and me starting back up at CAC at the end of June for summer camp, we probably should look at getting away for a bit.  I was going to end my work experience on a Friday and start up at CAC on the Monday following, but no. Geoff has wanted to go visit his grandparents, go to Rogers Ohio for the Rogers Sale (really... this to him is a highlight of going out to WPA. Rogers Flea Market. Oh to be a 15 year old boy again...) so we decided my last day will be Wednesday June 20th, we'll leave in the morning on June 21st, do Rogers on the 22nd (they are only open on Fridays) and entertain ourselves for Saturday. Doug talked to his mom for an extended period of time last night about our plans and it looks like it is a go on their end. Jess will stay here with Dogs, and we'll go to the motherland and visit.

And I am hoping it is relaxing, doesn't stress me out, give me hives, or make me stabby. Because I don't need that nonsense right now.

Here's to the end and the beginning. Hallelujah. Amen.

diets and work and diets and work and

We have had so many adventures lately and I've been too busy to actually sit down and write about them.

No word yet from BOA about our mortgage. I know that is your first question.

Our 2001 VW Passat finally died, or is as close to death as a car can be without actually being declared dead. We can't qualify for a car loan of any sort, seeing as our credit rating is totally in the shittah from this whole mortgage mess, so Doug found an auto auction located just over the border in NH.

We decided to go and check it out, see what it was like. We only had about 2000 dollars in cash that we could spend, so we didn't think there was going to be a vehicle that we could actually bid on. We were surprised by some of the prices, and bid on a few but got outbid and didn't take it above what we could afford. There were several really nice vehicles there that we could have gotten if we had a slightly higher budget.

The way this works is that the auctioneer (on the higher platform in the center in the picture here) has the seller/dealer to his left. The guy to his right helps watch the audience for bids. The guy standing in front of the car opens it up so people can come up and look at it inside and under the hood.

When the bidding kind of gets to the end, it is up to the seller to accept the bid. A lot of times, the bids are way below what the seller wants, so the car goes back into the lot unsold... if he wants 5000 dollars for the car and the high bid is 4000 he can refuse it, and wait to the next bidding day.

The auctioneer was a bona fide auctioneer guy with the fast voice and the calling and the singing of the numbers. I've only ever seen really old men doing this, so it was fascinating to me to see a guy in his 30s or so rattling off the auction song.